“Proprietary” is a magic word among truck builders. It describes components of the company’s own manufacture or design that are installed on the company’s own trucks. For truck users, this can be a good thing, because they’re designed to work specifically with a company’s other components.

As interest in natural gas power broadens, Freightliner is adding options that appeal to fleets wanting greater range and fuel savings technologies. The company plans to increase the operating range of some natural-gas-fueled trucks out to 800 miles.

Correction: Towards the end of this video, I describe two fill ports on the saddle tank as being for either the saddle tank or the cabinet tanks. In fact, either port will fuel all of the tanks simultaneously. One port, the smaller of the pair, is the one used by 95% of the retail CNG stations in North America. The larger port is a Transit port, which evolved from the transit industry, where they flow more fuel in a shorter period of time. Not many retail CNG stations currently use Transit ports, but as new stations are built, most are offering both fill ports. -- JP